Postal Service plans 7.3% price increase for in-county newspaper delivery; NNA chair calls that rate 'punitive'

The U.S. Postal Service is proposing a 7.3 percent increase in the cost for newspapers to mail to in-county subscribers next year – a rate described as “punitive” by a representative of the National Newspaper Association.

The large increase for in-county mail, to take effect Jan. 21, is almost four times higher than proposed increases for other types of mail, including first-class delivery, according to an NNA press release.

The proposed increases come at a time when some daily newspapers are considering switching or have already switched from carrier delivery to the mail, including a recent announcement by three Gannett Co. papers in South Carolina that they would move to USPS delivery on Oct. 10.

“It certainly seems as if the Postal Service wants to discourage newspapers from using the mail,” said John Galer, chair of the NNA board and publisher of The Journal-News in Hillsboro, Illinois. “At a time when local journalism is already in peril and more newspapers are using the mail to reach subscribers, this increase is simply punitive.

“We expect both our subscribers and other stakeholders in our community to push back at the subscription increases that will be made necessary by the Postal Service’s action,” Galer said in the NNA release.

According to the NNA, proposed increases for other types of mail – including those used primarily by other competitors to newspapers – will be much smaller. Those average increases include 1.9 percent for first class and advertising mail, and 1.59 percent for mail delivered outside of a publishers’ home county, which is a rate used for some local newspaper subscriptions but also for national publications.

“Ironically, the Postal Service’s principal justification for the steep increase is that the PRC (Postal Regulatory Commission) now requires USPS to share more of the savings created when publishers do some of the work that postal workers would otherwise have to do, such as presorting the mail and transporting it to destination post offices,” NNA said.

“Raising our prices so it can claim it is creating a fair discount is the sort of math we associate with shady deals,” Galer said. “Our industry has been doing a lot of mail preparation work for years to help keep postal costs down. For us to now be punished for that work simply adds outrage to our disappointment.”

Steven Waldman, head of Rebuild Local News, said on LinkedIn, "Amidst a democracy-threatening crisis in local news, the federal government is now actively making the local news crisis worse. . . . Maybe the Postal Service doesn't want to listen to James Madison and George Washington (subsidize the press!), but at least don’t penalize it. The Founding Fathers believed subsidizing postal rates was crucial to building up the free press and therefore the Republic. Instead, the Postal Service actively undermines the press's survival."